Category Archives: Home and Garden

Jan 28 2012

My Darling, My Washer

I got a clear and up-close reminder of how much laundry my family does in a week when our washing machine broke down on Tuesday.   I also got a serious look at how people can be robbed blind by washing clothes at a laundromat.

We were upstairs eating dinner when I thought I heard the dryer buzzer going off in the basement.  But it was a longer buzz than normal – about 15 seconds.  I went downstairs and the dryer was still going, but the washer was silent.  I pushed the knob in and then pulled it back out.  Nothing.  I opened the washer.  It was full of water and clothes.

I checked the breaker box, but nothing had been tripped.  So I turned the washer off and put in a call to our home warranty company for a repair.  Later, I turned the washer on, just to check.  It ran through the full cycle and I put the clothes in the dryer.  Pushing my luck, I started another load of laundry.

After filling up and beginning to agitate, the horrible buzzing went off again, and this time I smelled hot electric ozone nastiness.  I turned off the machine and unplugged it, and took all the clothes out and piled the sodden mess in a basket, tilting it on its side to drain into the floor drain.

I felt lost – the dirty clothes piled up all over the laundry room and I was powerless to do anything about it.

Thursday, the repairman showed up and collected his $60 service fee.  It turned out that our 14 year old Amana washer (which has NEVER had a breakdown or service issue) had a frayed belt, shot bearings, and the seals on the tub were leaking, causing moisture to short out the motor, which was completely fried.  The repairman managed to run the motor long enough to spin the water out of the  machine, and then tallied up what it was going to cost (not us, the warranty company) to repair the machine.  All told, it would be just under $300.  The parts had to be ordered, so we’re looking at February 6 before the repair will be done.

And it will be a doozy – there will be two guys here, who will have to turn the machine upside down and essentially rebuild it inside.  The warranty company offered to just credit us with the $300 so we could replace the machine, but there’s no way I can get as good a washer for $300 as we have now, even if it is 14 years old.  It’s built to commercial specifications, with a huge stainless steel tub and is an absolute workhorse.  With the repairs, they say we’ll get at least 5 more years out of it.

So today, I gathered up all of our dirty clothes and towels and cloth napkins and dishtowels and wash cloths.  I stuffed clothes into pillow cases (three of them, full) and baskets (three of THEM full).  And I took out to the car the basket of  still-wet (and now nastily mildewy smelling) half-washed clothes that had been in the washer when it broke down.

Rabbit packed up markers and paper and I brought my knitting project, and we set out for a nearby LaundryLand, where I planned to use the commercial triple-load machines to get our laundry done all in one fell swoop.

First of all, I haven’t been in a laundromat in years – in fact, it’s been seventeen years since we have had to put coins in any laundry machine.  So I was appalled that it was $3.50 to $4.00 to do one load in the triple-capacity machines.  I asked the attendant how many minutes a quarter would buy in the big dryers, and she told me five minutes.  So I decided we would wash the clothes there and dry them at home.

I used four triple-load machines and one double-load machine.  I spent almost $20 just washing clothes, but they were all done in less than half an hour.  I used my homemade powdered detergent, which made absolutely no suds at all, and even the stanky clothes that had been moldering in the basket for three days came out smelling fresh and clean.

At home, I hung at least three baskets of clothes on the line, since it was about 40 degrees, windy and sunny outside.  In the basement, I put a load of clothes into the dryer and then hung jeans on the drying rack, delicates on the little round clip-hanger I use, and then hung dish towels and shirts on hangers around the downstairs shower bar (which goes to the basement shower area next to the washer, which has not been used for showering since probably the 1970s).  I did this to pre-dry the clothes, because the laundromat machines strategically don’t spin the clothes quite as well as home machines, in what I believe is an attempt to make you spend more on the dryers.

HOLY HELL, it was a long afternoon.  I’m used to doing one or two loads of laundry a day, just keeping up with what’s down the laundry chute.  This was a marathon of changing out loads in the dryer, folding, putting on hangers, running clothes upstairs, and putting away towels and linens.

I went outside and gathered the clothes from the line at dusk, and they were still slightly damp, and freezing cold.  They didn’t take as long in the dryer, fortunately.  Right now, the very last load is tumbling away.

There were families at LaundryLand doing their week’s wash, and I can’t fathom how much they must spend in a year on washers and dryers, as well as the giant jugs of name-brand detergent they were using.  One elderly Vietnamese man was washing blankets in the triple-load machine and I think he used eight ounces of liquid Tide.  No wonder a third of their machines are out of order.

If we did all of our wash at the laundromat every week the way other families have to, we’re talking about at least six loads of wash a week – even if we used the triple capacity machines, that’s $12 a week (separating the whites, the colors and the reds, which is our usual method).  Drying the clothes would be about $2.00 per 40 minute dry time, multiplied by four machines to distribute the clothes efficiently, and that’s $8.00 to dry the clothes.  So a minimum of $20.00 a week to wash and dry a standard amount of clothes.  Many times, we have even more laundry than that, since we use cloth napkins, wash our sheets and bath mats and so on.  But even conservatively estimating $20 a week means that in a year, we could spend over $1,000 at the laundromat!

Seriously, the cost of doing laundry every year on its own should convince people to buy a washer and dryer with their income tax returns instead of buying a big screen TV.  I know some of these folks live in apartments without laundry hookups, but some live in houses.

It’s no wonder the poor stay poor.  (I say this because I know – we’ve been there and occasionally go back there when times are lean).  Thank God our machine will be fixed in just over a week and we can go back to doing laundry on our own time.

I read an article a while back about how expensive it is to be poor:  how you might only be able to afford a crappy cheap item when you buy something big, and then it breaks down so you have to  replace it.   I see the laundry situation fitting right into that.  Someone lives in an apartment and they do their laundry in coin-0p machines….how many budget experts think to factor in the cost of keeping clothing clean?  I’m willing to bet not many.

One of our ongoing expenditures is our home warranty.  It is $40 a month, but covers appliance breakdowns and our furnace and central air, some plumbing and electrical malfunctions.  It has paid for itself almost every year, just in repairs to our fridge, our dryer twice, our dishwasher, etc.   Since our income fluctuates so wildly, we consider the warranty to be a form of insurance against the inevitable:  something breaks down when we can least afford to have it fixed.  In another year or two, we’ll be able to get rid of the warranty after we’ve replaced our furnace and our water heater and our kitchen range.  Until then, we are holding onto it.  It sure helped us out this past week.  Meanwhile, our plan is to start socking away the equivalent of the warranty payments into savings to build up an emergency fund for these kinds of repairs.

Of course, we had an emergency fund in 2011: we just had to use it for living expenses.  Let’s hope 2012 shapes up to be better than 2011.

Now, go hug your washing machine.  And if you don’t have one?  You really should think about changing that.

Jan 18 2012

Grey Slush and Restlessness

This is that dreadful time in winter when I hit the horse latitudes; I need to organize but am unmotivated.  I need to plan for my spring garden but it is so cold outside it doesn’t seem it will ever be warm again.  My hair needs to be cut, we need new clothes, and of course, there is the dreaded grey slush melting on the floor by the mat next to the back door.

There’s something about that grey slush that just sends me over the edge.  The inability to control my environment, the irritation of stepping into a cold puddle in my stocking-feet? Either way, I hate it.

I’m sick of eating casseroles, soups and leftovers.  I’m sick of ground beef.  I’m sick of waking up in the morning in a dark house, with bare trees outside the windows.  I’m sick of the white residue of salt water crusting the car from the water thrown by other drivers’ tires on melting city streets.

Staticky hair from wearing a hat.  Chapped fingertips, chapped lips, dry skin.  Cracked heels catching on socks, cold drafts next to the door, my  engagement ring turning to the side inside my winter gloves, my eyes watering in the cold, my glasses fogging when I come inside.

My daughter is having growing pains and in the evenings after school, every day this week, she has whimpered while rubbing her thigh, unable to concentrate on homework.  The nurse line at the doctor’s office has cut me off mid-recording each time I’ve tried to leave a message.  It took three tries to ask them to call and let me know if we need to bring her in for an exam.

A thousand things are on the list of what I could complain about, but really what it boils down to is restlessness, the feeling I get every year between the new year and the start of spring.  I’m unable to focus, I can’t take on new DIY projects or crafts, and I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep.

So instead, I’m going to take a hot shower.  I’m going to start a loaf of bread and get ready for a client meeting this afternoon.  I’ll make supper for my family and after PC gets home and we eat, Rabbit and I will sit down and watch “American Idol.”

Spring will be here before long, but it can’t come soon enough for me.

Jan 12 2012

Help My Office Please

My quest for organization this year has hit a wall, which is made of paper and junk mail and boxes of envelopes and youth applications and notebooks and drawing paper and mugs of pencils and lamps and hatboxes, books, bottles of lotion and tape measures.

That’s right.  It’s time to clean my home office again.

This room has become the house’s junk drawer. The clearinghouse of miscellaneous crap we need or think we need or just have no other place for.

This year, my goal for the room is to take out the glass topped computer desk and move it downstairs for my husband’s computer. I want to find two nice sturdy wooden sawhorses and paint them white and use them for the base of the desk I am going to make out of the old door from my parents’ house.  I thought about using file cabinets for the base, but the very idea of that was so disheartening I couldn’t think straight.

I need to empty out the closet, which is packed to the gills with boxes of old files and documents and school papers and youth retreat souvenirs and old clothes and books and an old dresser (for real) and God only knows what else.

I would love to take the closet doors off and make the closet into a work nook for my sewing machine or my drawing table and supplies.

The office organization system I put together from itso brand storage stuff I got at Target a couple of years ago has been turned on its head after I took half of the system out of the office and put it in the kitchen to organize our things by the back door.  So I would like to get that back into the office by getting something else in the kitchen.

I will have pictures of some of this stuff eventually but honestly, the office is such a train wreck right now that I don’t have the stomach for it.  For now, here is a quick diagram of the room:

(Sorry, I just drew it and snapped a picture with my phone).

The window situation is that we have those 1950s ranch high privacy windows; they are about five feet from the floor, so I can put things below them and get lots of light in the room.  As you walk in the door, to the right is the only full wall in the room.  That’s where I have the big postal sorting cabinet I got on Craigslist last fall.

My desk is currently in the middle of the west wall, below the window, but that means I have my back to the door while I’m working, and I’m not a fan of that.  The drawing table is in the corner by the closet.  There is stuff EVERYWHERE.

If I make the desk out of a door, it’s going to be huge.  I’ll put tempered glass on top of it and it will be standard height, but that sucker is going to be enormous.  I’m thinking that if I put it on the big wall by the door, I could put some filing stuff to the left of it, in the northwest corner of the office.  Then I could move the postal cabinet to the west wall.

Any feng shui suggestions? Any regular suggestions? I’m not looking to spend a bunch of money and I don’t think I’m going to paint the room, even though it is aqua with a deep purple ceiling.

 

Jan 6 2012

Frugal Friday: An Organized Kitchen Is Budget Friendly

Silly, right?  Remember how I said if you keep your dishes washed you’ll save money on food?  That’s because you won’t feel as reluctant to cook if your kitchen is clean.  Add to that if your kitchen is clean and ORGANIZED.

Now let’s establish something here.  If you have ever been to my house you will know I’m not a clean freak.  The sorry state of my windows, the leaves gathered in the car port, the piles of paper everywhere in my office, and the fine layer of dust on most of the furniture (until recently) show that I’m human, and slightly grubby.

But recently, I decided to keep my kitchen clean and organized, and to keep the dishes washed.  I also did a little relocating of kitchen items to make things simpler.

The first thing I did was clean out my refrigerator.  How frugal is it to have such a messy and disorganized fridge that you keep buying Ranch dressing because you can’t find the last bottle you bought?  And now you have four bottles of it.   Or jam.  Or Miracle Whip.

How frugal is it to buy a bunch of one thing because it is on sale and then it goes bad before you can use it because you bought too much (cheese, fresh produce, bread).

If you keep things simple in the kitchen (fridge and pantry) you will be more likely to know before you go to the store what you need, what you already have, and what you can make for dinner.

So anyway, back to the kitchen reorganization and the fridge.  I cleaned that sucker out and threw away SO MUCH FOOD.  I read somewhere that American’s throw out, on average, 40% of the food they buy.  I was sick just reading that.  But I see how it can happen.

In the fridge (and I do not have before photos because it was so gross) I found, way in the back, in a Tupperware container, leftover rice with pink mold growing on it.  I found a container of sad, sad cottage cheese that looked like a science experiment.  I found leftover soup, leftover meat, leftover mashed potatoes.

Sick and wrong.  While throwing these things away, I realized what they had in common:  they were all in Tupperware containers.  I couldn’t see inside the containers and out of sight = out of mind.

So my wish list for now is a set of clear glass pyrex containers with airtight plastic lids that I can use to store leftovers and other foods in the fridge where I can see at a glance what is inside them, reducing waste.   I love Tupperware in a sentimental way, but using them for leftovers is causing a lot of food waste.

When I finished cleaning out and organizing the fridge, it looked like this (and don’t worry – I’m going for groceries tomorrow):

At the top, we have our Fage yogurt (Greek yogurt that I LOVE), applesauce, tub margarine (it’s stick margarine that I whip with the mixer and add a little olive oil to for spreading), Rabbit’s cottage cheese (she loves it) and margarine for baking.

Below that on the left is the “snack” drawer, which is actually full of cheese.  We love cheese and it’s a great meal stretcher, snack, and generally fabulous in all ways.  That top shelf used to be lower and we lost a whole set of storage which is now open below the cheese drawer.  Instead of putting the milk on the top shelf when it was lower, we now have it in the middle, along with the omnipresent pitcher of tap water staying cold, and a carton of orange juice, and a couple of cans of PC’s soda.

The bottom shelf is reserved for eggs, some leftovers (in containers with plastic wrap on top or clear plastic lids!) and my new helpful thing:  a plastic bin where I can put defrosting meat so if something drips, it stays in the container and not all over the shelf (which is what happened last week).

The veg drawer is clean and lined at the bottom with a paper towel  and always has carrots and celery in it.  Contrary to popular belief, regardless of what some people on Pinterest do, you are not supposed to store onions or potatoes in the refrigerator.  Or bread.  Did you know that?  Bread goes stale faster in the refrigerator.  Look it up.  It’s true.

By the way, you are also not supposed to store your milk or eggs in the door of the fridge, because they don’t stay as cold there.  You’re welcome.

Moving on:  Here is the fridge door.  (You can skip this if it’s boring, which it very well might be):

We are the king and queen of condiments: this is our pared down collection.  At the bottom are all those bottles of salad dressing and two jars of Miracle Whip.  Also, my jar of yeast for bread.

Above that, more crap.  Capers, mustard, olives, jam, pickles, salsa, horseradish, more mustard, tahini, relish.  And a bottle of white wine used exclusively for cooking and I know it’s supposed to be on its side but I don’t drink it so lay off me.

The butter section has butter in it.  Also?  Papers from butter and margarine wrappings that I save to use for greasing my bread pans. I told you I was a tightwad.

Next to that is ketchup, vinegar, worcestershire sauce, steak sauce, etc.

The excitement must be killing you.  So let’s move on to the pantry.

I was pretty excited to clean and reorganize the pantry, because there wasn’t going to be any food waste.  I keep that stuff pretty regimented.  What I was struggling with was fitting everything in the way I wanted it to, especially spices.

I got the spice section figured out by moving some non-spice items to a different part of the cupboard and moving the coffee stuff out of there completely.

I know, every day I think how lucky I am to have this built into the door of this cabinet.  Below is the inside of the cabinet on that side:

What I did differently is put the oils and vinegars inside a bin, and the same with the other basket, which holds syrups and honey.  I kept finding drips and spills in the cupboard and it was driving me batty.  I like this method better.  Random stuff in the middle (including a Tupperware container of homemade cookies) and spices above that.  On the top shelf, I have a basket where I collected all our tea bags and packets of cocoa mix, as well as some jars of bulk spices like bay leaves and black pepper, and a couple of cute Tupperware shakers for flour dusting, cinnamon and sugar mixture, and the nutritional yeast I sprinkle on popcorn.  Don’t ask.

The side to the right of that is most changed:  I put the onions and garlic in one basket, and on the top shelf, the potatoes are in another. All of our envelopes of seasonings and a couple of sides, as well as envelopes of kool-aid, are in a little plastic bin.  I have pint jars of couscous and falafel mix, boxes of pasta, and a cannister of small pastas in bags.  Just a few canned goods: I find that if I buy too many, I end up in chaos and not using them up, or buying more because I can’t find that can of soup I was looking for.

The lower part of the pantry cupboard is not much changed, so let’s skip that.

Here’s the fun part:  I rearranged the kitchen counters/cupboards so that on the right side of the kitchen is now a “toast and coffee station.”  PC had his giant coffee maker on the right side of the kitchen, and the bread box was right next to it.  My coffee maker was on the opposite side.  Counter space was  cluttered.

We have two appliance “garages” with tambor doors and on the right side of the kitchen, I had been storing my cookbooks in it.  The door wouldn’t close, so the cookbooks were always visible and sometimes a mess.

Now look at the counter on the right side:

I moved the bread box into the appliance nook, and store the electric knife way at the back on top of it, and the butter dish is in front of the electric knife.  There’s enough room for the bread box door to open (it has a cutting board in the door) and leave room for the toaster, my little coffee pot and PC’s giant grind and brew machine.  Morning coffee and toast, all in one place.  Also, the cupboard below this section has cereal, and the bowls, saucers and coffee cups are right above the coffee makers, with silverware in the drawer right below.

Here’s a closeup of the bread box, just because I love it. It’s probably from the 1950s or 60s and is a lot like the one my Grandpa had in his house.

Above that is the corner cabinet where we had stuffed PC’s coffee stuff, a bunch of medicines (since you’re not supposed to store them in the bathroom where it’s damp and can ruin meds) and miscellaneous junk.

Here it is now:

At the top is a basket of empty jars, as well as PC’s jar of flaxseed (he eats them like candy, by the recommendation of his gastroenterologist).  The middle shelf has a lazy Susan for common meds like Tylenol, cough syrup, etc.  The red tin box holds other medications out of sight, like Midol, foil packs of Dairy-Ease, boxes of cold capsules, and so on.

The bottom shelf has PC’s extra coffee grinder, a second set of parts for his coffee machine, and his container of coffee beans.  At the left, my jar of tiny coffee filters, an antique blue mason jar of coffee, and behind that my jar of sweetener.

The opposite counter on the left side of the kitchen now holds my crock of kitchen utensils, the salt cellar, our food processor and the KitchenAid mixer.  I had more kitchen utensils but put them in a box to see if I use them in the next several months.  If I don’t, they’re going to Goodwill.  The drawer below this counter has some smaller utensils, like peelers, etc. And the door to the appliance garage hides the cookbooks.

Oh, and a couple of jars of treats:  cookies and crackers.

Now that things are more organized and make better sense, it’s easier for me to keep the kitchen clean and feel more motivated to cook.

If you’re not asleep by now from reading this post, what have you done to make your kitchen more organized?  Do you cook a lot, a little, not at all?  What makes it easier for you?

Jan 5 2012

Hall Closet Makeover: Mission (not)Impossible

Sweet fancy Moses.

My hall closet?  Appalling.  Absolutely appalling.

The hall closet, just about six feet from the bathroom and visible from the living room, was probably intended as a linen closet back in 1953 when the house was built.  Once upon a time, we had sheets stored in it – for about two weeks in 2001 right after we moved in.  After that, it became a vertical junk drawer.  Whenever we weren’t sure where something should go, we stuffed it in the hall closet.

Pretty soon, sheets were stored in stacks down in the laundry room.  Towels have always been stored in the more than ample cupboards and drawers in our bathroom.  Truly, our bathroom has almost as much storage as some small kitchens.

I was determined this week that I would get that hall closet straightened out.  I’ve become addicted to Pinterest, and one of my pinboards is called “Getting Organized:  OCD Porn.”  It’s just pictures with links to well-organized kitchens, cupboards, closets, shelves, garages, drawers.  Reading through some of the websites and blogs with these pictures, I developed a strategy for my project today.

1.  Decide what the closet is going to be used for.  We don’t need it for linens – we don’t have a lot of sheets and have decided that Rabbit’s spare sheets will go in the top of the closet in her room, and likewise for ours, in our room.  Spare blankets/comforters can go in our cedar chest or in a cabinet/cupboard we’re planning for downstairs in the laundry room.

What do we need it for?  Well, all of our board games have been stored for years on a high shelf in our coat closet – not very sensible because Rabbit can’t reach them to get down or put away.  So I wanted to move the games into the hall closet.

I also have stored my sewing machine in there for years, and until I can find a place in my office for a sewing area, I can keep my sewing machine, box of supplies, cutting mat and tub of fabric remnants in the closet.

We also need a central place for the first aid stuff, as well as light bulbs.  And there are miscellaneous pet things, seasonal party supplies and a few random craft items that had no home.

2.  Empty the whole wretched closet and start sorting.  First I took everything out of the closet.  Dear God.  An old CD player.  Two humidifiers.  Scads of cleaning chemicals.  Party supplies, old pillowcases, Easter baskets, bags of empty plastic bags.  Two plastic rain ponchos.  Light bulbs, felt, spools of thread, candles, curtain rods, bookmarks, bottles of glue. Pipe cleaners, antique table cloths, scraps of paper, a large bag of gauze bandages, several ace bandages, cat hairball medicine, some dog flea medicine, bottles of old shampoo, a hand towel I KNOW we haven’t seen since 2001, some Visine that expired in 2005, old tempera paints, a PVC pipe marshmallow shooter, and on and on.  Here are a couple of pictures.

3.  Set up a sorting system and put things in categories.  I ended up with the following categories:
1.  Sewing and fabric
2.  Healthcare items
3.  Crafts
4.  Parties and holidays
5.  Lightbulbs
6.  Home decor and DIY
7.  Cleaning supplies
8.  Office supplies
9.  Toys and recreation
10.  Pet stuff
11.  Toiletries and cosmetics

I put the  toiletries and cosmetics (curlers, etc) into the bathroom.  The cleaning supplies were put in a large tote and into another closet where I will deal with those later when I tackle the bathroom cupboards and cabinets.  Home decor and DIY stuff went into the top shelf of the coat closet.  Office supplies went into my office.

4.  Find containers to group items instead of having them loose on the shelf.  Start boxing/crating items you have sorted.  As much as I would like to have cute matching bins and baskets and little labels on them, we don’t have that in the budget at the moment and I made do with what I had.  My motto is “Done is better than perfect.”

I found a cardboard box from office paper that I filled with a little basket of first aid supplies (Neosporin, Calamine lotion, chigger lotion, eye wash, band-aids) and the rest of the box holds ace bandages, gauze pads, and our heating pad.   I found a fabric bin where I put all the light bulbs.  A clear plastic tote with a missing lid is holding a small supply of craft items.  I put the Easter baskets and the plastic eggs into a plastic grocery bag and tied the top shut.  Same with party supplies.

5. Put things away neatly and smile.

Here is the after:  

On the bottom of the closet, I have my Rubbermaid tote filled with fabric scraps.  On top of it is my (new for Christmas from my father-in-law) self-healing plastic fabric cutting mat with grids, along with my ruler.  Above that on the next shelf is my sewing machine and my box of sewing supplies, along with the instructions for my machine.  When I sew, I just take everything out and set it up at one end of our long kitchen table – this system works just fine for the time being.

Here’s the inside of my sewing box.  Note the snazzy rotary fabric cutter I got with the Christmas money PC’s mom sent me.  I LOVE THAT CUTTER!

There’s also scissors, thread, pincushion, measuring tapes, extra sewing machine needles, regular sewing needles and some other stuff whose function escapes me.  And bobbins.  I hate bobbins.

The shelf above that is the better done than perfect one:  the containers are kind of lame, but they do the job.  First aid stuff and light bulbs.

The first box is the first aid stuff – eventually it will be in a clear container:
The other box is light bulbs:

PC can no longer say “We NEVER have light bulbs in this house!”  Well, we do.  About 20 of them.

The next two shelves up are devoted to our board games.  I had no idea we owned so many!  The lower shelf is for Rabbbit’s games, with a few of ours spilled over.  Our shelf holds PC’s poker chip set, our games, our cribbage boards and a shoe box full of decks of cards.

There are two decks of regular cards and five decks of Pinochle cards.  I don’t play Pinochle and refuse to allow my husband to teach me.  Early in our marriage we drew up two steadfast rules:  he is not allowed to teach me to drive anything, and he’s not allowed to teach me card games.  Because we will end up divorced in either circumstance.

The very top shelf holds the craft box, a basket with a few pet items (hairball remedy, a cat comb we never use, and a heating pack left over from when Hazel was deathly ill and had to sleep on a heated pillow because she was too thin to generate body heat).  Next to that is a bag full of Easter basket supplies and behind all that is a bag of party supplies, a party platter, and a trick or treat pumpkin bucket.

I threw away a lot of things, and many items simply went into other cluttered closets where they will have to be cleaned out and sorted later.  But for today, I feel like I conquered Mount Everest.  It’s hard to overstate the psychological effect of an organized closet after having one in such chaos.  Life is easier to manage when things are clean and organized. At least for me.

 

Later, I will post pictures of my re-organized kitchen cabinets and fridge, if you can stand the excitement.

If you have a blog and want to tackle a before and after project, please take pictures! Send me a link and I’ll post them here.

Jan 5 2012

Catching Up For the First Week of January

Yes, it is January 5th and I am still at home with my daughter, who doesn’t return to school until the 9th.

JANUARY NINTH, PEOPLE.   We have been doing small activities together in the afternoons to keep occupied:  drawing, doing puzzles, reading together, cutting fabric into squares, craft projects….it’s starting to wear on us.

The other day, Rabbit’s BFF came over for the afternoon and they played fort in the living room.  BFF is allergic to cats, however, and Rabbit’s blankets and the rug had cat hair on them. BFF had watery eyes and a stuffy nose by the end of the afternoon.  While they played, I made homemade tortillas.  Rabbit had one with butter and cinnamon and sugar.  BFF informed me she didn’t like tortillas.  Nor did she like cinnamon cookies, or clementines (the other snacks on offer).  ”I don’t like a lot of things,” she said.  She did, however, say she liked chocolate.  She was eyeing a jar of the last of our chocolate Christmas cookies.  I told her that chocolate was not on today’s menu, unfortunately.

When it was time for BFF to go, she and Rabbit hid in Rabbit’s closet while BFF’s mom and I visited.  BFF refused to come out unless her mom let her spend the night at our house.  I went into the bedroom and opened the closet door.  ”BFF, we do want you guys to be able to have a sleepover sometime before school starts up again, but it’s not going to be tonight.  Rabbit’s daddy is working a long day and will need his rest and this is just too short of a notice.”

Both girls were upset and tried to stay in the closet.  I opened the door again. “And Rabbit, you know you have to behave to get any privileges so if you stay in here and help BFF not do what her mom tells her to do, then you don’t get to have anyone sleep over.”   Well, she practically shoved BFF out of the closet after I said that, and helped her into her coat, and walked her to the door.

I wasn’t kidding when I told BFF that Rabbit’s dad has been working long days.  PC has been working ten to twelve hour days and when he gets home, it’s dinner time and then he lasts about an hour before he has to go to bed in order to get enough sleep before the alarm clock goes off at 5:30.  New Year’s Day was a huge treat for him because he got to sleep until 11:00.  If he came home from a 12 hour day to my daughter having a sleepover, he would have a nervous breakdown.

In other news, I am learning how to knit. I took down the Christmas tree and decorations, changed out the lamps in the living room for the cool round ones that were in my office, have kept the dishes washed and the kitchen counters clean every day this week, and finally cleaned the shower.  It was disgusting and my daughter had scratched a smiley face into the soap scum on the shower floor.

I rearranged the kitchen cabinets somewhat:  I organized all of our coffee supplies into one location and moved some lesser-used kitchen utensils and electric appliances to a closet.  I also cleaned out the fridge and rearranged the shelves into a more sensible layout.  Later today, I am going to tackle the hall closet, which hasn’t been organized in probably eight years.   Maybe I’ll take pictures.  Because I am that interesting.

As a parting gift, here is a picture of Rabbit and PC taken at the wedding reception we went to on New Year’s Eve:

Dec 20 2011

Whiplash Subject Changes (and Gingersnaps)

Today at the office, an affiliate company that handles title insurance and escrow closing management came in and set up a Nacho Bar for us.  Now let me tell you, after receiving boxes of cookies and plates of cookies, and plates of fudge and boxes of fudge, and candy and candy canes and candy corn and everything but gallons of Maple Syrup, it was a little slice of heaven to walk into the conference room and see little paper baskets of tortilla chips and then a row of toppings:  hot nacho cheese, taco meat, guacamole, salsa, sour cream, olives, jalapenos, onions….

We were practically giddy.  For about half an hour there were about thirty of us just hanging out, trading real estate war stories, talking about our holiday plans, enjoying salty snacks and bottled water  and the incomparable contentment of warm melted cheese on chips that I didn’t have to pay for.

Last night, I had some of our youth retreat Council people over – youth and adults – for a Christmas potluck.  I made a pot of chili, someone brought hummus and pita, there were meat and cheese trays, a giant pan of chicken strips from a local chain restaurant (Rabbit had two) and various cookies and brownies.

Now I’m ready for some apples, carrots, celery and smoked turkey for a few days to detox from rich foods.

Also at the office, our main office manager/executive assistant came in with her 3 week old baby boy, for the first time since she left for maternity leave the day before Thanksgiving. He is precious and we all took turns holding him and fussing over him. He wore little black fleece pants and an impossibly small thermal long-sleeved shirt, grey, with tiny white skulls printed all over them. So CUTE.

By the way, as I skip willy-nilly from subject to subject here…I cleaned the damn house yesterday.  And by house, I mean I cleaned the kitchen, the living room and the bathroom.  My kitchen is so clean that it makes Rabbit euphoric.  I rearranged the bookcases to redistribute the books that didn’t get put into the book tree, and added to the shelves some interesting artifacts, framed photos,  small statues, vases of marbles and other curiosities.  It’s fun to look at now.

I also dusted. Sweet fancy Moses, was my living room dusty.  It was appalling.  It’s clean now and I’m pouncing on any member of my family who puts down a piece of paper on a side table or stacks homework or work papers anywhere on the kitchen table or counter.  I’m just sick of all the clutter.

Remind me of that in three weeks when I am once again buried under an avalanche of unopened mail.  *sigh*

For now, though, it is a pleasure to walk into a spotless house  (if you don’t look real close at  the kitchen floor) and it makes me happy.

Whiplash change of subject (what is WITH ME today?) but I’m on book 87 for the year, I think.  It’s “Doc” a fictionalized biography of Doc Holliday.  I’m only on page 3.  I finished “The Borrower,” and I loved it.

I made gingersnaps Sunday. I’m going to go eat three of them right now, and I don’t care who knows it.

Dec 18 2011

The Week In Pictures

I take a LOT of pictures with the camera on my cellphone; it’s an excellent way to capture little moments and fleeting things.  All the pictures in this post are from my cellphone except for the final one.

I picked up my daughter from her after school program earlier this week and she and her friend had been working across from each other on a giant sheet of newsprint, with crayons and great ambition.  They had learned the word “anatomy” at school, but Rabbit was also still fixated on Christmas, so they combined the two.

Rabbit enjoyed last week’s homemade macaroni and cheese:

I love having a kid who enjoys mixed vegetables.  ”Mommy,” she always says, while eating them, “Lima beans taste like potatoes.”  The CD on the table is by a group my husband loves, called the Bel-Airs.  They used to regularly play at the Zoo Bar here in Lincoln and we went to see them many times.  Good blues music, FYI.

It wasn’t until I saw this picture of Hazel on my favorite red blanket that I realized how cool the markings are on her back.  They used to remind me of the Shroud of Turin.  Feel free to give your own Rorschach thoughts on what they look like.

I am working on a commissioned pencil portrait of a child and realized how much I dislike drawing teeth.  This picture is about 20% done.  I need to have it finished by Thursday. And yet, I’m here at the computer.

I adapted the refrigerator bread dough recipe to wheat bread, PLUS, I reduced the amount of flour by quite a bit and I think it’s better for it.  Instead of 13 cups of flour, I used just over ten cups:  6 cups of whole wheat flour and 4 cups of white flour, and then a little more wheat to get it to the right consistency.  The bread is so much better: not as dense, not as prone to being gummy inside.   The crust is thick but the inside crumb is very fine and the smell is yeasty and wheaty and rich.

Finally, a picture of one of my most treasured Christmas ornaments, a tiny plaster angel that hung on my great-grandmother’s Christmas tree, then on my grandmother’s, then my mom’s tree and now on mine.

Enjoy your week – snap random pictures as you go and look at them often.  I am so glad I am from a family of shutterbugs, to keep a record of life as it passes, from the everyday to the special: because one day, you may not be able to tell one from the other.

Dec 13 2011

Macaroni and Contentment

Tonight for dinner I made homemade macaroni and cheese, from scratch ingredients we had on hand in the house.

I cooked 1 1/2 cups of cry macaroni and left it al dente.  I caramelized tiny minced onion pieces in butter and then added a tablespoon of flour and 1 1/4 cups of milk and some pepper to make a white sauce.  Then I added a little dry mustard, a little paprika, and 8 ounces of cheese:  half of it was shredded sharp cheddar and the other half was American cheese.

I whisked the cheese in a little at a time and kept whisking til it was all melted and starting to bubble.  I added the macaroni, and mixed it up, then added a handful of little bacon pieces.

I tipped it all into a greased casserole dish, and then topped it with buttered fine bread crumbs and some parmesan.  Into the oven it went for 30 minutes.

It was so good!!!  We had it with mixed vegetables and Rabbit had two generous helpings of both.

We’re stretching our pantry items out to last us for the next ten days til PC gets paid: we have chicken stock and several more chicken leg quarters, a pound of frozen bacon, some dry beans, frozen containers of onion soup, chili, ham and bean soup, and leftover taco meat.  We have eggs and flour for pancakes and flour and yeast for bread.  Several bags of frozen veggies, lots of pasta, canned fruit, fresh carrots and celery, plenty of onions and spices, cornmeal, some cheese.   We’ll go to the store next week to fill out the

Rabbit eats lunch at school and between now and the 23rd, there are so many holiday luncheons at work and with affiliates, I’m not going to have to bring lunch from home.  PC has been taking the lunch leftovers.  It’s been a fun challenge to plan out the meals ahead and see how many options we have from our pantry and freezer.  It’s a lot more than I would have thought.

I did find a fantastic recipe for bread dough that you make ahead of time and can store in your fridge for up to two weeks, cutting off as much as you need for a loaf or a pizza crust as you go.  It’s salt, water, flour and yeast and nothing more, so it’s been a godsend for us.

Mostly, it’s been nice to sit at home in the evening, the three of us, after dinner and before bed.  The Christmas trees are up and glowing with lights.  We’re safe, we’re happy, we’re warm and healthy.  Everything else is just a temporary inconvenience.

And man, was that mac and cheese good!

 

Dec 12 2011

Wherein I Build A Christmas Tree Out of Books

This past week on facebook, I saw a link someone had posted to a photo of a tall conical tower of books that had Christmas lights strung around it.  I immediately thought “I am SO doing that next year for Christmas!”

Last night, after Rabbit went to bed and PC went out to the garage to watch football, I started building my own book Christmas tree.

I would have taken pictures along the way, but I didn’t even think of it til I was almost done.

I started with the bigger hardbound books I had, like coffee table books, art books, etc.  All the books were arranged spine/title out, flat on the floor, in a flower-petal circle of about seven books, making an empty space in the middle.

The next row was arranged the same way, but with the books in this level overlapping the spaces between the books below.  Same with the level above that.  I gradually used smaller books, building up and in.

About halfway up the stack, I stuffed a sofa pillow down into the well in the center, so that if any of the books started to slide inward, they couldn’t collapse into the well.  As I built up higher, I stuffed another sofa pillow into the center and mashed it down.

Toward the top, I had to redo the books a few times to get them arranged right.  As the stack got narrower, I ended up with a couple of Harry Potter books at the very top, and to make the top come up to a point, I put on top of the last book an upside down flower pot that I had painted red with a painted pattern of Christmas lights around the rim.

I wanted to use the old fashioned big Christmas lights for this, but we didn’t have any and I wasn’t going to buy any more Christmas lights when we have thousands in the basement.  So I wrapped two strands of colored lights around the stack, which also served to kind of tie the books into place.

Here is a picture of the “tree” without the lights turned on (this one was taken with my cellphone camera – sorry!):

I know the lights kind of look like barbed wire in this picture – next year I’ll have different ones.

Here’s a picture of the “tree” with the lights on:

How fun is that??

The whole thing has about 200 books in it, which is more than I was anticipating, and took only about an hour to complete.  If I’d had more time to organize books from throughout the house and plan a little better, I would  have been able to make a much bigger stack – as it is, this one is just under five feet tall and probably weighs over 125 pounds.

It is in the southeast corner of our living room, right in front of the door that leads out to the deck.  We almost never use that door, especially in the winter, and have had our regular Christmas tree in this corner a few times.

The fun part of this is that it was fast, free and fun.  It really doesn’t take up that much space and as much as I love books, it is just a joy to sit and look at on a cold winter evening.